A debatable approach

The 2008 presidential debates between John McCain and Barack Obama are over, and the Commission on Presidential Debates likely will fade into obscurity until the next election.

Between now and 2012, though, there ought to be a hard look at the way the debate commission operates.

As New Orleans civic leaders discovered in the past year, the selection of debate sites is politicized and secretive. Despite an exhausting list of requirements that cities are asked to meet, the choices ultimately weren't based on objective criteria.

If they had been, commission representatives wouldn't have embarrassed themselves trying to explain their rejection of New Orleans in favor of Oxford, Miss.

Despite New Orleans' abundance of hotel rooms, high-tech venue and broadly backed proposal, commission members claimed that the city wasn't ready to host the event. The ease with which we've handled the BCS national championship game, NBA All-Star weekend, Jazzfest, Essence Festival and multiple visits by President Bush and other dignitaries argues otherwise.

As they tried to deflect questions about the decision last fall, commission members contradicted themselves and threw out more and more absurd arguments. The commission, which was created in 1987 by the Democratic and Republican parties, also refused to make its bid evaluations public. The truth seemed to be that the commission and its executive director decided on the debate locations based on their own private criteria.

That is unfair to communities that made a good faith effort to compete for a coveted debate slot, and the process should not be so arbitrary next time around.

New Orleanians had very personal reasons for wanting the presidential candidates to speak to America from here. As we recover from Katrina and the levee breaches, every opportunity to show the outside world our progress and our ongoing needs is valuable.

The city also would have been the best place from which to debate the crucial domestic issues facing this nation. From the retooling of health care to the reinvention of public education to disaster preparedness, New Orleans is at the forefront. Sen. McCain, to his credit, referred to the city's exciting charter school experiment during last week's debate.

Alas, that was the only mention of this community and the issues that are so vital to its recovery. The debate commission virtually assured that when it snubbed New Orleans.

Four years from now, if we are fortunate, this region will have largely healed from Katrina. But there will be equally important issues to discuss during the 2012 presidential campaign. And any city that competes for a debate ought to be able to trust that it has a fair chance of winning.

Unless the debate commission makes its process more transparent and less subjective, that won't happen.